It was true. Rose had purposely set up camp far from any neighbors. It was enough having to be around everyone during the day; she could do without hearing people fart in their sleep all night. She put her pack on, gauging the weight distribution. They had a long way to go, and she needed to make sure everything was in place. The tent shifted around, so she took it off and retied it. Now it was too high up on her neck and made it hard to turn her head.

“Shoot.” She took it off again.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have too much stuff. When we were on the move, everything was distributed among the group, so we were all even, but this is too much.” She sighed, pulling off the tent and opening the bag’s flap to rearrange the items inside.

“Can you leave anything?” Derrick was wrapping his own tent in a ground tarp.

“Nah—knife, change of clothes, hatchet, food…we’ll need all of this.” She was getting frustrated.

“Listen, why don’t you just leave your tent here? It’s too big. You don’t need all that space, anyway. We can use mine. Look.” He shouldered his bag and turned around to show her. “It’s already packed up nice, no worries.”

“Share a tent?” She looked at him suspiciously. “Why are you trying so hard for that?”

“Why not? We both have sleeping bags, so we’ll have our own space.” He tried to sound nonchalant.

Leaving the camp a few minutes later with her abandoned tent stashed behind a tree, Derrick tried even harder not to smile.

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

They left quietly and kept up a steady silence and a quick pace for the first few hours. The key was to get out of range of any potential searchers sent from the camp. Once they got to the main road, they’d have to decide which school they were going to. In a dense circle of pines where they could see the road, Rose finally stopped, pulled off her bag, and retrieved a water bottle from the side pocket. She sat on a moss-covered boulder, stretching out her legs with a sigh.

Derrick sat back on his heels and took the water when it was his turn. “Well,” he said after a long drink, “where to now, oh navigationally gifted one? Since this is the mission of the century, I assume you have some sort of game plan, right?”

Rose squinted toward the asphalt, then took in their surroundings, rubbing her palms across her thighs.

“I would do anything to hear music right now,” she said.

“I can sing for you,” Derrick offered, dropping the sarcasm for the opportunity to impress her.

“No, no, not like that.” She waved him off. “Not to be rude. Sorry.” She threw the apology at him like an afterthought.

She placed a hand on his shoulder for a second. He moved to touch her, but her fingers were already in her hair, pulling its thick weight into an elastic band.